<!DOCTYPE html><html><head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
</head>
<body>
<p>I made an ISO file with your script, posted it on my web site,
and somebody on the blind sysadmins list has already used it to
rescue a down server. It works for him, he got speech during boot.<br>
</p>
<p>I am mostly testing on a laptop so maybe it's just that one
machine. I As i said, i also tried it on my desktop early on and
didn't get speech. But testing it on my desktop is a PITA because
I have to reboot my desktop with every test iteration. It's hard
to test even on my laptop because it takes a long time to try a
modification, recreate the iso file, write it to a thumb drive,
put the thumb drive in the laptop, and reboot the laptop. Each
testing cycle takes like 15 minutes. Plus then if i don't get
speech, i can't figure out what is wrong with speech. I have to
ssh in and if that doesn't work for some reason, I've wasted 15
minutes.</p>
<p>But like i said, it works in a VM and it works for this other
guy. I think we are due for some bad weather here in Wisconsin
over the next few days. I'll just take my time and get back to you
if i figure anything out.</p>
<p>No matter what, we are way better off than before you wrote the
script. I tried many times over the years to rebuild the GRML iso
with the hardware synth drivers loaded by default. I could easily
enough figure out how to take apart the GRML iso but I could never
figure out how to put it back together agin. I was always trying
to resquas the file system and put that back in there. I didn't
even notice you weren't doing that until you pointed it out. But I
don't think that was where I was failing anyway. I think I was
failing to rebuild a ISO from the iso file system. That's hard.<br>
</p>
<p>PS: We got into a bit of a discussion about hardware synths on
one of the lists i am on for blind sys admins and seems like
nobody still has their hardware synth but me. Man, I don't know
though. That seems dangerous to me. I would not want to rely on
software speech when the chips are down.<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 5/29/25 9:01 PM, Kyle Sebion wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:CA+D-UrV6ZcB4U6jsVKjUTJcQXEmyRzPLscNWk+nMSW2iQR=06A@mail.gmail.com">
<div dir="ltr">
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">I
see that your script does the whole thing of copying the iso
to an updateable file system on disk, extracts the squashed
file system, modifies it, and then resquashes the file system
and recreates the iso.</blockquote>
<div>Close. Nothing is resquashed. The unsquashed fs is used for
collecting packages and generating a new initramfs, then
deleted.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">But
the software speech iso did not work on either a laptop or on
my desktop. They booted into GRML just fine but the software
speech driver, speakup_soft, was not loaded and there was no
speech. Weird thing is that the same ISO worked in a virtual
machine. I booted a vm with the same iso and it came up
talking. So that's strange.</blockquote>
<div>If speakup_soft isn't loaded, then I'd guess something
wrong happened during <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://github.com/KyleSebion/grml-espeakup/blob/7d66206cccaadf9b7dd3864744664a40037726b2/mk.sh*L60__;Iw!!Mak6IKo!MqwfPPZFyi3KaXuLWXbkkqGKRSo2ryK-cn2Ksj8b76e69jieC2zJwKaY4kJpng5Nmo6hR4nJ5sLdl68NVQ$" moz-do-not-send="true">https://github.com/KyleSebion/grml-espeakup/blob/7d66206cccaadf9b7dd3864744664a40037726b2/mk.sh#L60</a>
(systemctl enable --now espeakup).</div>
<div>What do <font face="monospace">systemctl status espeakup</font>
and <font face="monospace">journalctl -ab0 -u espeakup</font>
show?</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">I
don't think there is any reason to make the speakup_ltlk
driver a special case.</blockquote>
<div>I did that to reduce the scope of my testing.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">How
about if I put the modified script on my web site at the Math
Dept at the University of Wisconsin? I'll be responsible for
documenting, publishing, and maintaining it. That way it can
help more than just me. Oh, how about if I rename it
grml2speak? That way it fits into the grml2* fa</blockquote>
<div>That sounds fine. Just make sure to adhere to the GPL2
license: <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://github.com/KyleSebion/grml-espeakup/blob/main/LICENSE__;!!Mak6IKo!MqwfPPZFyi3KaXuLWXbkkqGKRSo2ryK-cn2Ksj8b76e69jieC2zJwKaY4kJpng5Nmo6hR4nJ5sJ9FBRegg$" moz-do-not-send="true">https://github.com/KyleSebion/grml-espeakup/blob/main/LICENSE</a>.</div>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sat, May 24, 2025 at
1:04 PM John G. Heim <<a href="mailto:jheim@math.wisc.edu" moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">jheim@math.wisc.edu</a>>
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div>
<p>Ah ha!</p>
<p>I see that your script does the whole thing of copying
the iso to an updateable file system on disk, extracts
the squashed file system, modifies it, and then
resquashes the file system and recreates the iso. I
didn't know you could do that last step all in one swoop
-- which is pretty cool. That is actually where I always
got stuck trying to do this myself in the past. That
xorriso command to regen the iso must have 20 settings.<br>
</p>
<p>Anyway, I also see that just documenting the process so
others can replicate it is not practical. I was hoping
GRML had some kind of hook for customization that I was
unaware of. <br>
</p>
<p>I generated an iso file for grml and my synth that uses
the speakup_ltlk driver. It works. So that's great.</p>
<p>But the software speech iso did not work on either a
laptop or on my desktop. They booted into GRML just fine
but the software speech driver, speakup_soft, was not
loaded and there was no speech. Weird thing is that the
same ISO worked in a virtual machine. I booted a vm with
the same iso and it came up talking. So that's strange.<br>
</p>
<p>Volume is fine, btw, that doesn't really matter.</p>
<p>I am wondering what you want to do next. I made some
modifications to the script to make it a little more
friendly and more generalized. I don't think there is
any reason to make the speakup_ltlk driver a special
case. If the user specifies anything but software speech
via the speakup_soft driver, it should just add the
speakup module dependency to initramfs, generate a new
initramfs, then overwrite the old initramfs with the
new. With that change, which is actually a
simplification, the script works for all hardware
synths, not just the ltlk. Pseudo code:</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>if driver is 'soft' then</p>
<p> generate isofiles/scripts/grml.sh</p>
<p>fi</p>
<p> add speakup module to initramfs</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>Note that following the above pseudo code, the software
speech module, speakup_soft, would be added to the
initramfs. But that's good. because even if everything
else goes wrong, to get speech after the boot is
finished, you only have to type 'espeakup' instead of
'modprobe speakup_soft; espeakup'. It's not a huge
improvement but it's not nothin' either.<br>
</p>
<p>I also made it so it checks if the packages the script
depends on are already installed so it doesn't try to
install them again.</p>
<p>And then I wrote some code to generate a name for the
resulting iso file. If you start with something like
grml-full-2025.05-amd64.iso you end up with something
like ltlk-full-2025.05-amd64.iso.</p>
<p>It might be better to end up with something like
grml-ltlk-full-2025.05-amd64.iso. But during testing, I
had too many files starting with "grml-" and I got tired
of ffilling the tab completion.</p>
<p>How about if I put the modified script on my web site
at the Math Dept at the University of Wisconsin? I'll
be responsible for documenting, publishing, and
maintaining it. That way it can help more than just me.
Oh, how about if I rename it grml2speak? That way it
fits into the grml2* fa<br>
</p>
<p><a href="https://people.math.wisc.edu/~jheim/GRML/grml2speak" target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://people.math.wisc.edu/~jheim/GRML/grml2speak</a></p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<div>On 5/11/25 12:19 AM, Kyle Sebion wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">Hi John,
<div>I made a script that sets up espeakup in a grml
.iso file: <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://github.com/KyleSebion/grml-espeakup/blob/main/mk.sh__;!!Mak6IKo!KRveEP_wSmqkGWjfMoJnuOGc6lW7lEHbwRT5N4XpDK8qH8tNxfcT3cyjCO3wR-YiS5miNMSyPbipyT0jCQ$" target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">https://github.com/KyleSebion/grml-espeakup/blob/main/mk.sh</a></div>
<div>It isn't a very long script, so it shouldn't be
hard to verify that it isn't doing anything
malicious.</div>
<div>To use it, boot grml, download the grml .iso you
want to use and the script, then run: ./mk.sh
<grml.iso></div>
<div>It will create espeakup.iso.</div>
<div>You might need to make tweaks based on the
hardware you boot espeakup.iso on.</div>
<div>I did do a fair amount of testing though (tested
using 4x different grml .iso files with espeakup.iso
as a cd/dvd in a vm and with espeakup.iso written to
a usb drive and booted on my hardware).</div>
<div>You might also want to change the volume I set
with amixer (I cranked it to max because my speakers
aren't very loud).</div>
<div>You probably know this already, but screen
reading won't start until some time after boot
finishes.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I might look into getting speakup_ltlk working.</div>
<div>That is a bit more work because the initramfs
doesn't contain it, yet.</div>
<div>Could be fun, though, because, since I don't have
the proper hardware for it, I'd probably set up some
other hardware so that I have a good idea if it is
working.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
</div>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sat, May 10, 2025
at 3:04 PM <<a href="mailto:tommym2006@gmail.com" target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">tommym2006@gmail.com</a>>
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">Hi,<br>
Some other dependencies for software speech would
be:<br>
The espeak-ng package sound hardware configured and
volume set to 3/4 volume<br>
for Mastre and PCM options.<br>
<br>
I don't know how hard this would be to do, the
Debian installer has this<br>
functionality and if there's a way you could look at
this you'd have a place<br>
to look as their install has had this for a few
versions now working<br>
properly.<br>
<br>
Tom<br>
<br>
-----Original Message-----<br>
From: Grml <<a href="mailto:grml-bounces@ml.grml.org" target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">grml-bounces@ml.grml.org</a>>
On Behalf Of John G. Heim<br>
Sent: Friday, May 9, 2025 1:23 PM<br>
To: <a href="mailto:grml@ml.grml.org" target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">grml@ml.grml.org</a><br>
Subject: Re: [Grml] Customizing GRML to start speech
as early as possible<br>
<br>
<br>
On 5/9/25 11:32 AM, Michael Prokop wrote:<br>
> * John G. Heim [Wed May 07, 2025 at 01:42:23PM
-0500]:<br>
>> On 5/7/25 12:14 PM, Michael Prokop wrote:<br>
>>> To clarify the situation: for *you*
only "modprobe speakup" is<br>
>>> relevant, or do you use any of the
specific modules like<br>
>>> speakup_dectlk?<br>
>>><br>
>>> Do *you* need anything other than just
"modprobe speakup_soft" or<br>
>>> alike to get it working/useful for your
situation?<br>
<br>
<br>
Personally, I would need the following:<br>
<br>
1. Kernel module speakup<br>
<br>
2. Kernel module speakup_ltlk<br>
<br>
3. kernel module speakup_soft<br>
<br>
4. espeakup program/package<br>
<br>
<br>
The espeakup program has to be running for the
kernel to access a text <br>
to speech engine for software speech.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
>> I mostly use the Litetalk driver,
speakup_ltlk. But to use a hardware <br>
>> synth,<br>
>> you have to have a machine with a serial
port. This is another reason<br>
>> supporting hardware speech synths is more
work than it is worth. My blind<br>
>> friends say the machines they work on do
not have serial ports. So <br>
>> far, that<br>
>> has not been a problem for me. Even my
desktop has a serial port. When I<br>
>> ordered the mobo, I just made sure it had a
serial port header block.<br>
> Alright, And you don't need anything extra like
espeakup or alike,<br>
> but that might be relevant for users without
hardware like yours?<br>
<br>
<br>
For most users, this would be sufficient:<br>
<br>
1. Kernel module speakup<br>
<br>
2. Kernel module speakup_soft<br>
<br>
3. Espeakup program/package<br>
<br>
<br>
>> BTW, if you are interested, I'll be giving
a talk a week from today <br>
>> on being<br>
>> a blind systems admin to the Campus
Research Computing Consortium<br>
>> (<a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://carcc.org__;!!Mak6IKo!KRveEP_wSmqkGWjfMoJnuOGc6lW7lEHbwRT5N4XpDK8qH8tNxfcT3cyjCO3wR-YiS5miNMSyPbjP_dtPvg$" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">https://carcc.org</a>).
Meeting details below. I will probably mention <br>
>> GRML but<br>
>> I won't spend a lot of time on it since i
have so much to cover.<br>
> That sounds interesting. :) Did I understand
the date/timezone<br>
> right, that your zoom meeting starts at 12:00
PM in ET (Eastern<br>
> Time), corresponding to 6:00 PM AKA 18:00 CEST?<br>
><br>
<br>
I am pretty sure it is at 1:00 Eastern. It is
confusing though. The <br>
meeting was created by somebody in the Central time
sone so that's why <br>
it says 12:00. That's his time but it's 1:00 PM
Eastern. I'll send the <br>
organizer an email just to be absolutely sure<br>
<br>
I am starting to think those people who say the
entire planet should <br>
have one time zone are on to something. If I have to
get used to 3:00 AM <br>
being lunch time, so be it.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
_______________________________________________<br>
Grml mailing list - <a href="mailto:Grml@ml.grml.org" target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">Grml@ml.grml.org</a><br>
<a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://lists.mur.at/mailman/listinfo/grml__;!!Mak6IKo!KRveEP_wSmqkGWjfMoJnuOGc6lW7lEHbwRT5N4XpDK8qH8tNxfcT3cyjCO3wR-YiS5miNMSyPbhstMPDMw$" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">https://lists.mur.at/mailman/listinfo/grml</a><br>
join #grml on <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://irc.freenode.org__;!!Mak6IKo!KRveEP_wSmqkGWjfMoJnuOGc6lW7lEHbwRT5N4XpDK8qH8tNxfcT3cyjCO3wR-YiS5miNMSyPbhf2s-evA$" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">irc.freenode.org</a><br>
grml-devel-blog: <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://blog.grml.org/__;!!Mak6IKo!KRveEP_wSmqkGWjfMoJnuOGc6lW7lEHbwRT5N4XpDK8qH8tNxfcT3cyjCO3wR-YiS5miNMSyPbj2Y6uRBA$" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">http://blog.grml.org/</a><br>
<br>
_______________________________________________<br>
Grml mailing list - <a href="mailto:Grml@ml.grml.org" target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">Grml@ml.grml.org</a><br>
<a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://lists.mur.at/mailman/listinfo/grml__;!!Mak6IKo!KRveEP_wSmqkGWjfMoJnuOGc6lW7lEHbwRT5N4XpDK8qH8tNxfcT3cyjCO3wR-YiS5miNMSyPbhstMPDMw$" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">https://lists.mur.at/mailman/listinfo/grml</a><br>
join #grml on <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://irc.freenode.org__;!!Mak6IKo!KRveEP_wSmqkGWjfMoJnuOGc6lW7lEHbwRT5N4XpDK8qH8tNxfcT3cyjCO3wR-YiS5miNMSyPbhf2s-evA$" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">irc.freenode.org</a><br>
grml-devel-blog: <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://blog.grml.org/__;!!Mak6IKo!KRveEP_wSmqkGWjfMoJnuOGc6lW7lEHbwRT5N4XpDK8qH8tNxfcT3cyjCO3wR-YiS5miNMSyPbj2Y6uRBA$" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">http://blog.grml.org/</a><br>
</blockquote>
</div>
</blockquote>
</div>
_______________________________________________<br>
Grml mailing list - <a href="mailto:Grml@ml.grml.org" target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">Grml@ml.grml.org</a><br>
<a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://lists.mur.at/mailman/listinfo/grml__;!!Mak6IKo!MqwfPPZFyi3KaXuLWXbkkqGKRSo2ryK-cn2Ksj8b76e69jieC2zJwKaY4kJpng5Nmo6hR4nJ5sJp0sqyOA$" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">https://lists.mur.at/mailman/listinfo/grml</a><br>
join #grml on <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://irc.freenode.org__;!!Mak6IKo!MqwfPPZFyi3KaXuLWXbkkqGKRSo2ryK-cn2Ksj8b76e69jieC2zJwKaY4kJpng5Nmo6hR4nJ5sIyAMUXYQ$" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">irc.freenode.org</a><br>
grml-devel-blog: <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://blog.grml.org/__;!!Mak6IKo!MqwfPPZFyi3KaXuLWXbkkqGKRSo2ryK-cn2Ksj8b76e69jieC2zJwKaY4kJpng5Nmo6hR4nJ5sL1DKtewA$" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">http://blog.grml.org/</a><br>
</blockquote>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
</body>
</html>